1

I know about the conditional sentences that go as following:

"If I were he, I would have forgotten the whole lesson."

In the sentence above, "he" is preferable to "him," but can it also be preferred in the following case?

Whom can I trust, if not ___. a) he b) him

I pardon, if this is related to conditional sentences.

Quora has similar question but with very short answers, as in:

answer from Quora

Edit: I don't think my example sentence is concerned with relative clause, rather the first part of the sentence looks independent:

"Whom can I trust, if not he" contains comma between them.

And how does following sentence is related to the above sentence:

If I can't rebuke him, whom should I rebuke. (Does 'him' makes sense here?)

Ahmed
  • 4,657
  • Definitely not; the object case is required to correspond with whom. – Kate Bunting Jun 05 '23 at 07:50
  • 2
    @KateBunting but even for speakers who don't use "whom," the blank would have to be "him." – phoog Jun 05 '23 at 08:08
  • 3
    @phoog - Yes - I wondered whether to mention that, but decided to keep my comment simple! – Kate Bunting Jun 05 '23 at 08:15
  • Is "purdon" a typo for "pardon" or "presume"? If it is the former, it doesn't make semantic sense in any case. It is difficult to guess what you meant to say. – Mari-Lou A Jun 05 '23 at 09:00
  • Related: I can run faster than _____. (1) him (2) he? and When whoever vs. whomever fails the he/him test – Mari-Lou A Jun 05 '23 at 09:11
  • @Ahmed, there are 16 answers in the first link, two in the second, and one in the third. The 3rd Q, which I retain your question is a duplicate of, has a very thorough, well-research answer. Modify the statement and you get I voted for *him* and It was *him* I voted for. The latter is far far more common in speech. – Mari-Lou A Jun 05 '23 at 09:46
  • @Mari-LouA the suggested duplicates aren't, because (1) comparative+than does not appear here and (2 and 3) there is no subordinate clause here. – phoog Jun 05 '23 at 10:01
  • @phoog you can vote to reopen it. The question is closed now. This type of question has been asked hundreds of time… the complement is "him", it's in your answer, it's in Quora's and it's in Herisson's detailed answer. – Mari-Lou A Jun 05 '23 at 10:10
  • @Mari-LouA Thanks. I have indeed voted to reopen. I would add that the importance of the distinction between this question and the others is that the others are controversial: native speakers disagree about which case to use with than and about which case to use for the complement of be, and they also disagree about whether or when to use whom. But here the question concerns the complement of trust, which everyone agrees should use the oblique case, and about he, which everyone agrees must be him in the oblique case. Perhaps [ell.se] is the better venue for this question. – phoog Jun 05 '23 at 10:31
  • I agree that it is a rather elementary question better suited to ELL. It's a pity that Herisson's answer wasn't of help. – Mari-Lou A Jun 05 '23 at 11:24
  • Put simply, accusative "him" is preferable in both cases. – BillJ Jun 05 '23 at 13:28

1 Answers1

2

That the first sentence uses "he" has nothing to do with the conditional, but about the correct complement of the verb to be. (To be clear, were is the past subjunctive of to be.) There is a school of thought that the complement must be in the subject case, as in German:

Who's there? — It is I!

Most speakers, however, use the object case, as in French:

Who's there? — It's me!

There is no tendency, however, to use the subject case for the complement of trust. Nobody says

*I trust he.

The correct answer, therefore, is him. This would be true even for speakers who do not use whom, as many do not. Most native speakers would say

Who can I trust, if not him?

The correct response to the exercise in question is, therefore,

Whom can I trust, if not him?

This is rather stiff and formal, or perhaps old-fashioned sounding, but both are correct.

(In some contexts, one or the other could be incorrect by virtue of being stylistically out of place, but a detailed discussion of that is beyond the scope of this question and answer.)

phoog
  • 5,953
  • in the final sentence of concluding your answer, didn't you mean to say: "whom can I trust, if not him?" rather than "[who] can I trust, if not him?" – Ahmed Jun 05 '23 at 08:13
  • 1
    Strictly speaking it should be whom, but many posters on this forum will tell you that it sounds very stiff and old-fashioned to use it. See, for example, this question – Kate Bunting Jun 05 '23 at 08:19
  • @Ahmed no, because I meant the final sentence to illustrate the way that most native speakers would express this thought. Whom is virtually obsolete. Most people do not use it, and many who do use it incorrectly. I, a highly educated native speaker, did not understand its correct use until I began to learn German at the age of 20. Even still, in colloquial contexts I would use who. I don't want to discourage you from using whom, but it is useful to understand its role in modern English. I've edited in an attempt to clarify. – phoog Jun 05 '23 at 08:23
  • 1
    @phoog all right – Ahmed Jun 05 '23 at 08:28
  • 1
    @Ahmed There are a few fixed phrases where "whom" is still used such as "For whom the bell tolls”, it's a famous Hemingway book but it's entered the English lexicon; "all/some/none of whom", although that's changing too, and "to whom it may concern" – Mari-Lou A Jun 05 '23 at 09:35
  • @Mari-LouA the questions you suggested as duplicate or related don't have enough answers. I am non-native, I maybe wrong and I am unaware about the whole grammatical use of he/him/whom. – Ahmed Jun 05 '23 at 09:38
  • 1
    'Who can be trusted, if not he?' is probably something some might say. – Edwin Ashworth Jun 05 '23 at 15:07
  • @EdwinAshworth of course, for there "who" and "he" are both in the nominative or subject case or whatever you want to call it. – phoog Jun 05 '23 at 19:22